


i guess that's called belief (so is this belief?)

by sleepingontheceiling



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Pre-Will Byers/Mike Wheeler, Sad Will Byers, Will-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 13:47:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13237008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepingontheceiling/pseuds/sleepingontheceiling
Summary: He is learning.As winter fades into spring, and the world comes back to its senses, so does Will.





	i guess that's called belief (so is this belief?)

December was crumbling away. He could see it in his own breath, exhaling it into the night air. He could feel it in his heartbeat, under his thin sweater, his striped shirt, his dry skin. Will wrapped his cold hand around the bones of his wrist, checked it like a watch, his own internal clock ticking time away. 

Seconds tick like hours, he thinks. He lost time that he can never get back. 

//

He’s rolling over into his dreams, where he is dying, where he is disappearing into thin air. 

He imagines it, things he never saw in his consciousness, Hopper, beating the life back into him, Nancy, jabbing him with the hot iron, as his hands are squeezing the life out of the one who gave him his own. Bob, the kind, brave, innocent, the wiser than will-the-wise guy, getting shredded into pieces. 

He doesn’t know what’s his fault, what’s his responsibility. He should not have to own any of it, but there was a part of himself taken away and he can’t own up to what was never his to blame.

Sure, he’s a thirteen year old kid. But someday he wants to be somebody. And the thing is, some kids grow up and some do not grow up at all. 

He’s not sure which one he will be. 

He’s not quite sure what’s worse. 

//

He is learning. 

As winter fades into spring, and the world comes back to its senses, so does Will. 

Max is teaching Lucas to skateboard as the snow melts away. Dustin has brought Steve into their lives, and Mike has brought Eleven full circle into their party. Jonathan has Nancy, and his mom is circling around Hopper. Or Hopper is always just surrounding them all. 

But still, as alone as Will feels, he is never left alone. They _hover._ It’s their way of showing him they won’t forget even though they want him to. It’s some kind of pure love. He doesn’t really understand it. And he doesn’t quite feel like he deserves it. He is completely surrounded, and at times feels more alone than ever.

He can’t hate how things change because they have to. It’s how life works, how they move on. But something will never be right and he hates that. Out of everyone, why? Why him? 

He is glad that what happened to him didn’t happen to one of his friends. He has horribly tried many times to imagine it like he was in their shoes. But he can’t. If he thinks too hard about anything he’s start to lose it. He can’t. He can’t imagine if it had happened to Mike. Lucas. Dustin. He just can’t. 

So maybe it was meant to be him. He is the weak link of the group, the quiet observer, the only skillful-at-seemingly-useless-things guy. He sees things that nobody else can see. He’s always been a bit different from his friends, from the boys in his grade, from the town around him. 

He can tell.

(He’s different and he knows this) 

On March 22nd he turns fourteen, but feels a thousand years old. 

//

School lets out for the summer and the scorching pavement Will treads on leaves its mark. He sweats, he burns, and he can’t help remembering how much it likes it cold. 

He meets the others at the community pool, ignoring the stares he feels on his back. 

“Will!” 

Lucas slings his arm around his shoulder, and Max smirks as they lead him towards the deep end. He hears the distinct sound of Dustin’s laugh and the forceful smack of water from Mike’s belly flop before he sees them, glistening in the cool water.

(It’s time to sink or swim) 

//

He blinks. 

Suddenly it’s been an entire year. (Make that two?) It’s not like he thinks about it, dreading it, but the anniversary effect is very, very real, awakening something buried inside him. 

And he’s strong. But if you’d try to bend him like a pencil, he’d snap. Or if he would have written out his life story so far, the point would seem utterly dull. 

Dull, like the tip of his pencil that he breaks from the anxious tapping against his desk. He can’t concentrate. High school is as brutal as middle school, and nothing could have prepared him for it. He had heard that high school could be the best years of your life, but he thinks whoever said that was either completely oblivious or 100% idiotic. He’s learning a lot, but it’s not particularly satisfying. 

(It’s not)

Dustin looks over at him, sitting a row away in their Algebra class. He mouths “you ok?”

Will just nods, quickly looking back down at his notebook, at the sketch of nothing he was making onto the thin paper. He can’t speak right now, or look at anyone too closely, or he’d cry. 

He stays that way till the bell rings, no matter how much Dustin tries to get his attention, no matter how much he should be paying attention to the formulas on the board. 

He just breathes.

//

He’s lying almost upside down on the couch, the blood rushing to his head when he sees the scuffs of his brother’s sneakers. The marks left on them remind him. 

He has his own. 

“Hey bud.”

Will swallows hard but the ‘hey’ back gets caught in his throat. 

Jonathan grabs his legs, swinging him back around to the ground, to solid ground, until he is sitting beside him. “I told you once.. that being a freak is a good thing.”

Will’s staring at his hands, at an old stain on the carpet. “Yeah.”

“You still believe that, right?”

He nods. 

“You see, when people look at each other, at us, they see what they want to see. Completed picture or not. Real or not real. They don’t actually know. They see what they want to see.”

Will just shrugs. “What are you saying?”

Jonathan chuckles. “You’re my brother, Will. And I see you.”

He suddenly has moisture in his eyes. And he suddenly can’t see because the tears blur his vision. And as they fall, his brother’s arms close around him, steady, holding him close. 

Will. Solid, breakable, strong, weak, incredible, pathetic Will. He doesn’t quite know who he is yet. 

Jonathan _does._

//

He loves Mike.

I mean, of course he does. He’s his first friend. He’s always been there. 

But. 

First love?

It’s taken him years to decipher what this feeling in his stomach means, the fluttering, the desire for something more, the attachment, but it clues in that winter, hits him like a frozen snowball to the face. 

It’s in the way he looks at Will with wide-eyed wonder, with sprinkles on his cheeks, as if Mike had put his face up to the sky in rainstorm of freckles. It’s in the way his soft skin wears wrinkles as he scrunches his nose up real tight. It seems to not be a fault but a habit and he hopes that Mike won’t run away from the truth, from him, from it all. 

But the truth is something neither of them should fear. It exists between them, and it’s always been there. 

He wants Mike to understand. He wants him to know. But he doesn’t feel like the author of this. Will is just a chapter in Mike’s book, same as Lucas, and Dustin, and Nancy, and Mrs. Wheeler. The people in his life he loves, surely, but not the person he loves most. 

El is the title. Jane Hopper is written in bold text, not Will Byers. 

And he wants to be angry. He wants to hate Eleven, because Will was there before her, because she is the reason _why_ , because she seems to have taken his place, because she is cool and exciting and an amazing human being for someone who has been treated like shit. 

But he can’t. He loves El too. They are a lot alike. And maybe that’s why Mike gets along so well with both of them. Just differently. Not quite equally. 

Maybe that’s why Will feels like he is the one losing. 

Maybe he really is. 

//

Is bravery when he stands up and pretends he can do anything and that nothing can ever stop him or is bravery when he cries out at night, because he knows what it takes to survive, because he knows what it’s like to lose _and he doesn’t want to feel that way ever again_

//

The more he gets to know Max, the more he finds out she is super cool. 

Just as much as El, but in a completely different way. She’s perceptive. She understands in a peculiar way too. It’s distinct, it reeks of rare sensitivity. And she grew up far away, miles away from cornhole Indiana and the place he has always called home. She has stories about the shade of blue the waves are, and she has memories about the blazing flares of the sun, and she has feelings about her real dad, and her step-dad, and her step-brother. Shitty, regretful, awful, sad feelings. 

They shake Will up inside. She gets it. 

It is what life with crazy family always was. It was never easy. Growing up poor is not a way to grow up either. It is a way to crash and burn before you can even get started. He supposes he should be thankful, because he has never starved, he has always had more than he has lost. And when his dad had left, he still has had a mom to love him twice as much. He can’t say he has had it bad. But he didn’t have it easy and that is not always a concept people can understand. 

But Max somehow does. She knows.

Sometimes we just do what we can, but not always what we wish. 

//

He’s tired. 

“Will. Please.”

He can’t. 

“Mike,” Will spurts helplessly. 

“I just.. I don’t know what to do.”

Will shrugs wordlessly in response, his shoulder sliding into Mike’s as he fiddles with the wrinkles on his shirt. He pulls on a loose string, tying it around his finger. He doesn’t want to forget. 

But Mike grabs his hand, unwinding the string. Remembering. 

He can.

Mike's arm wraps around him, tightly. His lips touch the top of his forehead, faintly. 

(He can still see the good in broken things.)

//

You see, sometimes people don’t fit together like perfect puzzle pieces, but rather like the ocean waves and the rough sand, or the toxic weeds and the soft earth. 

But they still flow together. 

And they will still grow together.

**Author's Note:**

> Will was my absolute favorite from the start. I loved, loved, loved his season 2 arc and getting to know him more. I keep thinking about the after though, & the older and the inner Will Byers. This is what came out of that. 
> 
> Feedback is always welcomed and appreciated. 
> 
> Thx.
> 
> -han


End file.
